


our past ghosts always haunting

by anonymousAlchemist



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Gen, IN WHICH STAN NEVER REGAINS HIS MEMORIES, a post canon AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-16
Updated: 2016-02-16
Packaged: 2018-05-21 00:17:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6031138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anonymousAlchemist/pseuds/anonymousAlchemist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every month or so, the guy with the face just like yours stops by. He says he’s your twin brother, and you’re inclined to believe him. He looks just like you, after all. But you would remember a brother, you’re pretty sure.</p>
<p>He says that you saved the world, and you say “Yeah, yeah, yeah, shut up Stanford, I’ve heard it before,” and then the two of you drink a beer together and he acts like a sadsack while you ignore his moping.</p>
            </blockquote>





	our past ghosts always haunting

**Author's Note:**

> We built this house on memories  
> Take my picture now, shake it til you see it
> 
>    
> IN WHICH STAN NEVER REGAINS HIS MEMORIES AND THINGS ARE SORT OF OKAY 
> 
> QUICK AND DIRTY, UNBETAED AND HOT OFF THE PRESSES, WILL COME BACK AND EDIT. NOT OKAY AFTER THAT FINALE, WILL NEVER BE OKAY AGAIN
> 
> note from the next day: still unbeta'd, has been edited, am still not okay.

Every month or so, the guy with the face just like yours stops by. He says he’s your twin brother, and you’re inclined to believe him. He looks just like you, after all. But you would remember a brother, you’re pretty sure.

He says that you saved the world from a mad demon named Bill Cipher, and you say “Yeah, yeah, yeah, shut up Stanford, I’ve heard it before,” and then the two of you drink a beer together and he acts like a sadsack while you ignore his moping.

So what, if you’re missing all your memories. From what people tell you, it’s not like your life was anything to write home about anyway. Maybe if you could remember it, you’d be pissed, but hey, blank slate and all that.

 

Listen, memory’s overrated, alright? Look at you, you’ve got a house and a job and you get to fleece tourists out of their money and you get to watch all of Ducktective all over again without knowing what happens next.

You kind of feel bad for everyone who remembers you-with-the-memories, though. The first thing you remember is the kids crying, and your brother crying. Man, what a way to wake up.

(The kids running up to you, and then the guy with the face just like yours — except you didn't know it was your face, he was just an old guy with a face — giving you a hug and telling you that you saved the world. A whole ocean of tears. General angst among everyone but you. You, you're fine, you feel great. Though you feel sort of bad that you don't recall any of them when they so desperately want you to remember. The girl (Mabel) even shows you her scrapbook, but all it is to you is proof that this is your family.) 

 

Every summer, the kids come back to visit. They say they’re your grand niece and your grand nephew, and okay, you can see the resemblance when you compare their faces to the ones in Ford's photograph. They were real teary-eyed the first time you saw them, but every time after that they’re cheerful, las if they’re determined to make new memories to replace the summer with them that you don’t remember.

“You act just like him,” Dipper (your grand-nephew) says. “Except you seem….Happier?”

You roll your eyes.

“Kid, I lost my memory, I didn’t get a personality transplant.”

“Sorry, it’s just weird, that you don’t remember us.”

You give him an affectionate clap on the back as you walk past him. He’s taller than he was last summer, the first time you met him. 

“Well, I remember you right now. Plenty more summers, if you keep coming back like this.”

“Of course we will!” Mabel (your grand-niece) says, from the ceiling. You and Dipper look up. She’s sitting in the rafters. “How else will I see you, and Uncle Ford, and Candy, and Grenda, and Wendy, and Soos, and—”

“Mabel, sweetie,” you say before she can continue, “Maybe you should get down from there.”

“Mm, okay, Grunkle Stan. But only ‘cause you asked nicely.”

She hooks her grappling hook and swings herself neatly down. Jesus, your family is weird.

 

“Hi Mr. Pines,” Soos says. (“I’m Jesus Ramirez,” he said, the first time you met him, “Call me Soos. I’ve been working for you for the last ten years.”)

“Hey Soos,” you say from where you’re absently going through the store’s accounts. You look up at him. “Say, there’s something that’s been bugging me. How’d I end up hiring you, anyway? You woulda been twelve back then.”

“Oh! Uh, well, I was just hanging around the Mystery Shack, and I kind of just ended up working here, dude.”

“Huh,” you say.

(Later the kids tell you about Soos’ absent dad and everything else. It puts some stuff in perspective.)

 

The weirdest part about having no memories is walking around town. The woman with the lazy eye at the diner (Lazy Susan) says hi to you affectionately, the cops wave when you pass them in the street. You smile nervously back. All these connections that don’t belong to you anymore. They're leftovers from the previous Stan Pines. 

“How come I knew so many people?” you gripe to your brother. He shrugs.

“You’ve lived here for thirty years, Lee. Of course you know people.”

He’s the only one who calls you Lee. To everyone else, you’re “Stan Pines,” “Grunkle Stan,” “Mr. Pines,” or “Mr. Mystery.” You don’t know if you like it or not, but he seems to need it, so you let him.

 

Here’s the thing. Apparently you spent thirty years trying to get him out of an alternate dimension, and then gave up your memories to save the world from a dream demon. It's bizarre. You figure he thinks that he owes you. He does, but the guilt is getting to you.

“It’s not your fault,” you tell him, one night, when you’re both watching TV. The kids are out with their friends, raising hell or whatever teenagers do. It’s the Ducktective season three finale; he’s seen it; you don’t remember it. Ford shrugs.

“It kind of is,” he says morosely.

“Yeah, well stop moping about it, it’s getting on my nerves.”

Ford shrugs.

“It’s just, I didn’t realize that I’d miss you so much until you were gone.”

You punch his shoulder. He flinches.

“Ow! What was that for?”

“Ford, you dumbass. I’m right here, and I ain’t going nowhere. And anyway, you don’t have any right to be pissed about it. If anyone should be pissed, it should be me, and I’m fine.”

He smiles a bit at that, but it fades.

“You should be angry, though.”

“Can’t be mad about something you don’t remember,” you say philosophically. “Now shut up, I want to see what happens next.”

 

It’s early autumn when your brother stops by again. The kids (well, teens) had left a few weeks ago, with hugs all around, and he had left a week earlier than them. You had waved them off, and settled back down into the scam artist daily grind.

You watch his car pull up from the porch, where you’ve been drinking a soda. He’s earlier than you’d expected. He parks the car, gets out, and walks up to you.

 

“Hey, Lee,” he says.

“Hey, Ford,” you say. 

 

“When we were kids,” he says, and stops. He takes a deep breath. “When we were kids, we said we were going to sail around the world and have adventures. We even had this boat we kept working on. The Stan O’War, we called it. But that didn’t happen.”

You nod slowly. He's told you about this before. “Yeah, so? Where are you going with this?

“Do you want to come with me? I’m going to investigate something in the artic, and we could get a boat, live out our childhood dreams” he says, all in a rush. You take a slow sip of Pitt.

Thing is, those were the childhood dreams of another Stan Pines. A Stan Pines who remembered growing up with his brother, not one who had met him for the first time when he was sixty-something and could only recall his face through old polaroids. You’ve got no emotional connections to the idea of a boat and adventure. To you it just sounds like a kid’s wishful daydream, some dumb pie-in-the-sky idea that got a couple of dumb kids through the day. 

But, there’s Ford, and in his gross old-man face (same as your gross old-man face), you can see the same boy you remember from the photographs he’d shown you. Same dumb hopeful expression that you saw on both of your faces in the photographs.

 

Maybe it’s time to get to know the guy with the same face as yours, the one who says he’s your twin brother.

And you think about the past years, the ones you remember, and you say, “Yeah, what the hell, I’ll come with you.”

  
You don’t think you’ve seen him smile like that before. 

**Author's Note:**

> FUN FACT SCIENCE CORNER: I contemplated making Stan say no when Ford asks him to come with him, because Stan doesn't have any emotional connection to the dream anymore, why would he go? What's the point? And I think that would have been more realistic, but I just couldn't do it. And besides, Stan's been dealing with his slightly-guilty brother for the past couple of years and he's sort of like "For fuck's sake, Ford, will me coming with you stop you from being a sadsack???" and he sort of does want to get to know his brother again. 
> 
> let me know if you liked it! kudos/reviews are the bomb.com
> 
> for more of...this, whatever this is, i'm at anonymousalchemist.tumblr.com


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